User blog:XKosh Naranek77B5x/The Good, the Bad, and the Lucky...
sigh* Playing the recent tournament. Lost the first match, won the second and third. Lost every other match after that, except my last two. Did I play with complicated to include monsters? Sometimes. Did I try out a "one size fits all" kind of theme? Sort of... But not always. Did I try using simpler monsters? Probably not as much as I should've. Sometimes, I played against opponents that just happened to have almost the same monsters I was using. That was kind of interesting, but it's easy to be out-manuvered (and I was). Othertimes, and this happened the most, I was just counter-picked. In other words, the majority of my losses was just because the opponent happened to have just that right monster to wreck my setup. On other occassions, it's because my monsters don't deal a high enough damage output, or they have significantly lower agility compared to my opponent's monsters. The Good usually occurs when I'm playing an opponent that has me backed up against the wall, I'm down to my last two monsters, and somehow I'm able to make a comeback. The Bad most often comes about because as I kill my opponent's monsters, their Reverse monsters are either nastier, or most of my monsters are wiped out, and my last one or two monsters can't even make a dent (let alone hit my opponent's monsters). Most of my fights I lost by surrender, because when your opponent has AGI approaching almost 45+ to nearly 50+ you're screwed. Or when they have preemptive attack, and just so happen to have the exact element to deal increased damage. The Lucky comes when either myself or my opponent are down to our last few or even last monster, and it's all a matter of pure luck who gets in the first strike. Or, it's because I just so happened to have the right monsters, or came up with a desperate plan for a comeback. Well, it's a lesson learned: Most players seem to aim for (at least at the time of this writing) Outrageously High AGI. We're not talking a measly 38+ AGI. We're talking like AGI approaching high 40's or even 50+. High frequency of Preemptive Attacks. The ever present and dangerous Splash damage on Reverse (which seems to be a lot lately). Or Splash damage via SP Skill. Very few players tried any tricky or complex strategies. Most players tend to favor pure power / raw damage. And victory by attrition. In other words, their monsters were carefully chosen to have: High HP, High AGI, Preemptive Attack, Splash Damage. Cheap / low cost monsters. And lots of monsters. In any seperate formation I encountered, my opponents had a full 4 monsters. In any 6-man formation, a full 6 monsters. It didn't matter if their Attacks could do significant damage or not; the idea seems to be to wear down their opponent's monsters and have any monster left to deal a final blow. Only faced one player with a Sphinx build. Hopefully, this will help whoever reads this (though it's more likely everybody knows these things already), to avoid making the same slip-ups I did. Good luck to all of you out there, and have a fun tournament! Category:Blog posts